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Re: PBS show
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:10 AM 6/13/96, Blake Wehlage wrote: >Hey did any of you guys(and ladies) see the PBS show called, Triumph of the >Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires in Silicon Valley. I thought it was >very interesting and informative. (That's coming from a 13 year with the >teachers say have no future) If you saw it I was wondering your feeling on >the show. I caught the show and thought it was pretty good, all in all. I personally despise the term "nerd," but I won't get into that here. (Except to say that "nerds," "geeks," and "dweebs" are terms of insult, and anyone who accepts this labelling by the media and by "jerks" (a comparable term, by the way) is proably just a dweeb anyone, so I guess the term is accurate.) Most of the portrayals of Silicon Valley history was pretty accurate, especially the 1975-78 "Homebrew Computer Club" days. (I used to go to about every other one of these, mainly in '77-78, where I sometimes passed out free samples of the 8080 and stuff like that. A friend of mine at the time was one of the Apple II motherboard designers, and another was the first employee hired by Jobs and Woz. Personally, my first personal computer was a Processor Technology SOL, as I thought the Apple II looked too much like a toy. Shows you what I knew.) The first "Byte Shop" opened in late '75 or early '76, a few miles from my apartment, so I used to go there to see the new machines. This is the store that bought the first batch of Apple Is (not IIs). Mainly I remember the Altair, the IMSAI 8080, the Cromemco Dazzler, and so on. Those were exciting times. But, having worked at Intel during those heady days, and being pretty active these days on the Net, I'd have to say the Web, Net, Java, etc. are *just as exciting* (if not more so) than those days. So, the best years are probably yet to come. (BTW, I also had an ARPANET account in 1973, when there were only several sites as nodes.) Back to the show... Cringely (actually, Stephens) is pretty good at doing sidebars explaining computers. So, a pretty fair history of the industry. Probably the best such show I've seen. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Tripwire and SATAN for Linux
by Steve O 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey guys, Can any one point to where i can get Tripwire and SATAN for Linux? a friend is in dire need. thanks... Steve O Steve O. "True Utopia can only be reached by an uncensored and secure Internet, True Chaos can only be reached by the government, True love can only be reached in the movies." S.O. "Bang your head, Metal Health will drive you mad!" Quiet Riot "Welcome my friend, Welcome to The Machine" Pink Floyd "Lonelyness and Emptiness; Love and Fulfillment; Are all but flashes in the eye of the storm of our tormented soul." S.O.

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Re: PBS show
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:26 PM 6/12/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >I caught the show and thought it was pretty good, all in all. I thought so too? When is part II coming on? (I hope it didn't come right after that, I had to run.) Next week? >I personally despise the term "nerd," but I won't get into that here. Ahhh... it makes them happy. What I find most unnapealing is the unabashed, "I don't have a life, I live with a computer" mentality. I was rather taken with that mentality myself for a bit (and I'm sure it contributed to the RSI), but even then I would have found it painfully difficult to only associate with one "culture" and only do one thing all day long. Maybe "nerds" over do it, but they do do other things, like play magic, or assasin, D&D, or whatever. <grin> And the most interesting/brilliant computer people that I run into _have_ other interests beyond computers. >first employee hired by Jobs and Woz. Personally, my first personal >computer was a Processor Technology SOL, as I thought the Apple II looked >too much like a toy. Shows you what I knew.) The thing that startled me, was the contrary temporal perspective. Watching it I felt like, "Hey! I remeber that, I used an Apple II in kindergarden to write LOGO," or though I didn't have an Altair, I had a Bailey Arcade. No one here probably remembers, but it was a kick ass game playing (the best at the time) and programmable machine. I remember belonging to a mailing-list club and getting a thick envolope of type written code that I'd dutifully punch into a calculator like entry pad. (All ~20 keys for quadrupely overloaded!!) The cool thing was it had cool (c-64 like) peeks and pokes and you could call a plethora of the pregenerated graphical things from your own code. Then there was always saving it to the audio tape... <ack> Ok, so that is the nostalgia bit (hey I remember that), the other bit was a, wow that was a long time ago. Looking at PC-history always feels like a contradiction in time. _______________________ Regards, Laziness is no more than the habit of resting before you get tired. -Jules Renard Joseph Reagle http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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RSAREF down?
by Howard Melman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know anything about this? tmp> ftp ftp.rsa.com Connected to ftp.rsa.com. 220- 220-Welcome to the RSA Data Security, Inc. FTP Archive. [...] 220-***************** Special Announcement ******************* 220- 220- RSAREF has been taken down until further notice. 220- We will keep you informed for any new announcement. 220- 220-***********************************************************

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Re: PBS show
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:26 PM 6/12/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >Most of the portrayals of Silicon Valley history was pretty accurate, >especially the 1975-78 "Homebrew Computer Club" days. (I used to go to >about every other one of these, mainly in '77-78, where I sometimes passed >out free samples of the 8080 and stuff like that. A friend of mine at the >time was one of the Apple II motherboard designers, and another was the >first employee hired by Jobs and Woz. Personally, my first personal >computer was a Processor Technology SOL, as I thought the Apple II looked >too much like a toy. Shows you what I knew.) But the Apple II WAS a toy! Non-detached keyboard, poor placement of reset key, upper-case only, 40-character wide display, odd microprocessor, VERY SMALL capacity floppies (which were very slow as well), as well as a hostile legal situation regarding the building of clones. Hell, they even objected to other companies building boards which plugged into the bus! Personally, I soured on the Apple II when I followed EDN magazine's attempt to build an engineering system with it, called "Project Indecomp." They ran into a boneheaded design problem with the Apple, due to improper clock synchronization and bus timing. They gave up the project, concluding that the Apple II was brain-dead. BTW, Intel shares a substantial proportion of the blame for Apple's choice of the 6502. The decision was made, I've heard, because Intel was still trying to get $200 for a slow 8080, while Western Design Center (?) wanted only about $20 for a 6502. And by refusing to build Masatoshi (?) Shima's design for the Z-80, they totally lost the race for the 8-bit PC world. The Z-80 turned into the highest-volume 8-bit microprocessor by far, leaving both the 8080 and the 8085 in the dust, and even the 6502. I have other, even harsher word for the design of the IBM PC. Oh yes, the Mac sucks bigtime as well, although primarily for legal reasons. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Students Beware -- Fla. gov. questions jailing of researcher
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:06:00 -0400 >From: reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu (Joseph M. Reagle Jr.) >To: reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu >Subject: Fla. gov. questions jailing of researcher > > > > TALLAHASSEE, Fla., June 12 (UPI) -- Gov. Lawton Chiles said Wednesday >he has ordered Florida education officials to determine whether a >university researcher jailed in a patent dispute should be freed. > Petr Taborsky, an undergraduate chemistry major who worked for $8.50 >an hour in a laboratory at the University of South Florida, was >sentenced in January to 3 1/2 years in a maximum-security prison. > He had refused to sign over to the school a patent for a new way he >discovered to use a substance similar to cat litter to purify water. > ``I don't know what he's doing in prison,'' said Harry Singletary, >Florida's prisons chief. ``We need prison beds for violent offenders, >for repeat offenders. I don't see him as anybody threatening the public >safety.'' > Chiles' general counsel, Dexter Douglass, asked the Florida Board of >Regents to look into the university's handling of what he called ``this >bizarre case.'' > Douglass has also asked the state's attorney general to look into the >prosecution of Taborsky, ``particularly the apparent use of state funds >for private attorneys to push criminal penalties.'' > USF reportedly has spent more than $320,000 on the Taborsky case, in >addition to the costs of staff attorneys. > Taborsky's legal problems stemmed from a testing contract USF signed >in 1987 with Florida Progress Corp., a utility conglomerate. > The contract specified that Florida Progress would own all data and >discoveries. But when Taborsky was hired to work on the project, he did >not sign an employment contract forfeiting the right to profit in >anything he might discover. > When he left school in 1988, Taborsky took two notebooks that USF >ordered him to return. When he refused, university police charged him >with theft. > Taborsky contended the data contained in the notebooks was from >research he conducted separate from the Florida Progress project and >that the utility showed no interest in it until he discovered the new >water-purification method. > When a jury convicted him of theft in 1990, Taborsky was sentenced to >a year's house arrest, 15 years' probation and ordered to make no >further use of the data. > But he pursued a patent and in 1992 received the first of three for >the process. USF lawyers argued that was a violation of his probation, >and the court ordered Taborsky to sign over the patent to the >university. > He refused, and was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. > Taborsky began prison life five months ago and has been described as >a model inmate. He served on a chain gang at first and by May was >working at the institution's waste-water treatment plant creating >computer programs to monitor the water. > Singletary said within a few days, he hopes Taborsky will be in a >minimum-security work-release center closer to where his parents live. > ``I'm looking for the right place to put him until he can be >considered for clemency or whatever else is being looked at,'' >Singletary said. > But at least one member of the Board of Regents defended the way USF >handled the Taborsky case. > ``It doesn't sound any different to me than a guy who steals books >out of the library,'' said Regents Chairman James Heekin. > ``What's the big deal?'' he asked. > > > _______________________ Regards, Laziness is no more than the habit of resting before you get tired. -Jules Renard Joseph Reagle http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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Re: PBS show
by Brad Shantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May Wrote: > I personally despise the term "nerd," but I won't get into that here. > (Except to say that "nerds," "geeks," and "dweebs" are terms of insult, and > anyone who accepts this labelling by the media and by "jerks" (a comparable > term, by the way) is proably just a dweeb anyone, so I guess the term is > accurate.) I just caught this show last night. And enjoyed it. I personally thought that Steve Jobs quoting Picasso with the "True artists steal" line in regards to copying others work for personal gain was interesting. Since I live 10 blocks away from the main MS Campus, I hear everything there is to hear about Bill Gates. So, it was really unnecessary for me to watch the hour and a hlaf devoted strictly to who Bill stole what from. **GRIN** > Those were exciting times. But, having worked at Intel during those heady > days, and being pretty active these days on the Net, I'd have to say the > Web, Net, Java, etc. are *just as exciting* (if not more so) than those > days. So, the best years are probably yet to come. Having started my "prefessional" Internet career at SPRY in 1993, I agree that the best of the Internet is yet to come. Bill Gates said in the show last night that it is almost impossible to judge where the market will be in a year because things are changing so fast. Right now everything is a buzzword. JAVA, etc...they are all infant technologies that if marketed correctly could lead to the next revolution. > (BTW, I also had an ARPANET account in 1973, when there were only several > sites as nodes.) I was 2 until August of 1973. **GRIN** I didn't even know that the pictures on the TV weren't real yet. > So, a pretty fair history of the industry. Probably the best such show I've > seen. I do wish they'd picked a better title though. Brad

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Re: PBS show
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:31 AM 6/13/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >Compared to my SOL, the Apple II would've been more useful, in retrospect. >As to the 40-character display, that was the norm in those days. (My SOL, >and certainly the other machines available to home users at that time, had >only a 40-character-wide display...when in worked.) > >The comments about the floppies (" VERY SMALL capacity floppies (which were >very slow as well") is even more off-base. The original Apple II floppy held ONLY 90 kilobytes on a 5" floppy. How did they do such a bad job? >>BTW, Intel shares a substantial proportion of the blame for Apple's choice >>of the 6502. The decision was made, I've heard, because Intel was still >>trying to get $200 for a slow 8080, while Western Design Center (?) wanted >>only about $20 for a 6502. > >You need to check your claims more carefully. There are always many reasons >a chip is selected for a design. Yes, there are, but a 10-to-1 difference in price is a killer for most designs. > >>And by refusing to build Masatoshi (?) Shima's design for the Z-80, they >>totally lost the race for the 8-bit PC world. The Z-80 turned into the >>highest-volume 8-bit microprocessor by far, leaving both the 8080 and the >>8085 in the dust, and even the 6502. > >Again, your understanding of the history of Intel, Zilog, and the industry >in general is lacking. > >The design and process technology resources were instead committed to the >8086, The design for the Z-80 was completed and in Intel's hands. Intel didn't want to build the Z-80, they wanted to focus on peripheral chips, so they let Shima go and start Zilog. and history is rather clear about the wisdom of doing that. Intel is >now capitalized at something like $50-70 billion, and Zilog is no longer on >the radar screen. No! The 8086 wasn't "wise," it was a crock. (The _principle_ of building a 16-bit microprocessor was just fine, and in fact necessary. It's their product that sucked.) Brain-dead segmented architecture, 64k per segment limitation, 1-megabyte memory limitation. The only thing that made it appear like a wise move (and even then, only in hindsight) was the fact that IBM was even more idiotic, and selected it (actually, worse, the 8088!) for their PC. Even a bad standard can be hugely profitable, and that is what kept Intel alive. Furthermore, the only way Intel got the 8086 off the ground was to buy off AMD to support the 8086, as opposed to the Z-8000 as they had done in a long series of anti-8086 ads in about 1978 or so. (you do recall the series, don't you? You know, the two guys on the soapboxes?) They later stiffed AMD by refusing to deliver the design for the 386, and they got raked over the coals for that a few years ago in court. Pure fraud. Intel's misbehavior has probably kept the price of the leading-edge generation microprocessor at least a factor of 3 higher than it would have been had AMD been allowed to compete according to their 1978 agreement. Much of the capitalization you speak of, therefore, was the product of this fraud. The world would have been far better off if they'd chosen the 68000 for the IBM PC. I suspect the reason IBM didn't was that they thought it would be easier to push around tiny Intel rather than the electronics giant Motorola. They were probably right about this limited interpretation, but in exchange for a little temporary control they doomed the world to a built-in series of design crocks that only began with the innate limitations of the 8088. Every product for the PC you buy today is more expensive, less reliable, harder to install, less compatible, more complicated for less benefit, has less competition, and is in general less desirable because of the mistakes Intel made in the middle 1970's, and IBM made in 1980 or so. These mistakes weren't repaired in subsequent incarnations of the 286, 386 and others, or IBM's AT, etc, because they were _architecture_ problems and software-design problems that cannot be "repaired." Why is it that you can afford 32 megabytes of DRAM, yet you'd get insufficient-memory errors if you're not careful with you CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT? (Combination of Intel's dumb mistake of a 1-meg memory limitation, and IBM's filling of 1/3 of that space with crap.) Why is it that you can't put two color displays on the latest PC's? (IBM's dumb mistake: Memory-mapped video that can't be re-addressed.) Why can't you put a dozen peripheral devices into a PC, and you have trouble with even 3-4, and are forced to look up all the DMA's, Interrupts, and COM ports to ensure no overlap? (IBM's dumb mistake.) I could go on, but what's the point? The PC architecture is pure crap, and I'm saying that as a person who uses them daily, and will not own a Mac because of Apple's legal misbehavior. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: PBS show
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:35 PM 6/13/96, jim bell wrote: >At 10:26 PM 6/12/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: ... >>first employee hired by Jobs and Woz. Personally, my first personal >>computer was a Processor Technology SOL, as I thought the Apple II looked >>too much like a toy. Shows you what I knew.) > >But the Apple II WAS a toy! Non-detached keyboard, poor placement of reset >key, upper-case only, 40-character wide display, odd microprocessor, VERY >SMALL capacity floppies (which were very slow as well), as well as a hostile >legal situation regarding the building of clones. Hell, they even objected >to other companies building boards which plugged into the bus! Compared to my SOL, the Apple II would've been more useful, in retrospect. As to the 40-character display, that was the norm in those days. (My SOL, and certainly the other machines available to home users at that time, had only a 40-character-wide display...when in worked.) The comments about the floppies (" VERY SMALL capacity floppies (which were very slow as well") is even more off-base. In fact, it was probably Apple's ability to put _any_ kind of floppies on the Apple II, for a reasonable price, that ensured its success. Processor Technology was effectively sunk by delays in getting its "Helios" 8-inch floppy drive working. The bigger and faster 8-inchers may have been technically superior to Apple's "Integrated Woz Machine" drivers and 5-inch floppies, but Apple was shipping. That counts for a _lot_. >BTW, Intel shares a substantial proportion of the blame for Apple's choice >of the 6502. The decision was made, I've heard, because Intel was still >trying to get $200 for a slow 8080, while Western Design Center (?) wanted >only about $20 for a 6502. You need to check your claims more carefully. There are always many reasons a chip is selected for a design. >And by refusing to build Masatoshi (?) Shima's design for the Z-80, they >totally lost the race for the 8-bit PC world. The Z-80 turned into the >highest-volume 8-bit microprocessor by far, leaving both the 8080 and the >8085 in the dust, and even the 6502. Again, your understanding of the history of Intel, Zilog, and the industry in general is lacking. The design and process technology resources were instead committed to the 8086, and history is rather clear about the wisdom of doing that. Intel is now capitalized at something like $50-70 billion, and Zilog is no longer on the radar screen. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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CDA & Clinton
by Daniel Salenger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It looks as though even after the temporary court injunction against major portions of the CDA, Clinton still wants to push it: http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/960612/news/stories/internet_4.html Very unfortunate. Please protect us from ourselves Bill. Dan Salenger dsalenger(a)dttus.com

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